I noticed it when I was a novice twenty three years ago, and I notice it today: Novices (those who are brand new to monastic life) are susceptible to attacks of the giggles—and at the most inopportune moments. One day, a few months after I had entered the cloister, I suffered a "giggle-attack" in the middle of Vespers. Fr. Eutropius, the assistant cantor, who used to dearly love listening to his own voice, and worked pretty hard at singing like Mario Lanza, could make you giggle even when he got the words right. Well, imagine the reaction of a self-conscious, high-strung Novice when, with his best operatic tenor, I hear Eutropius intone: "Blessed are those who hate peace!" What? I think he was supposed to sing: "Blessed are those who love peace." This would happen from time to time: Fr. Eutropius would get confused and substitute one word for another. The thing tickled me, and I started to giggle and immediately tried to suppress it, but the laughter escaped in little bursts and sputterings that began to attract the attention of the other monks. A "blooper" in the middle of a monastic prayer service can be funny, but that's not why I was laughing. What happens to you when you want to stop laughing and can't . . . isn't funny. You feel like you're losing control of yourself. Losing control of yourself, even in mundane circumstances like this is scary. My laughter was an expression of acute nervousness. I was losing it in the middle of choir. Today, Passion Sunday, as we were reading the Passion, I was struck that Pilate keeps calling Jesus the one who is "called the Messiah." What a bizarre thing to say about a person who is standing right next to you. Does Pilate hear what he is saying? If Jesus is not the Messiah, then the fact that he is the one "called the Messiah" suggests that a lot of people in Jerusalem are crazy. If Jesus is the Messiah . . . what are the implications for Pilate of mocking him with the words: "the one who is called the Messiah"? It occurred to me that Pilate is actually becoming frantic at this moment. He's losing it. Why? He finds himself suddenly standing at the edge of the Absolute and doesn't quite know what to do with himself. He is losing the ability to talk sensibly. He is standing next to the Incarnation of God's love for the world who is being prosecuted by lawyers in a court of law. Pilate's strange words are like a giggle escaping a man who is unraveling. He is losing himself. The angry crowd is losing themselves. I am suddenly urgently and passionately longing for Easter. Only God can make this right.

Father Raphael